Priming with the M-001 vaccine before an H5N1 pandemic vaccine means people would only need one inoculation shot instead of two H5N1 pandemic vaccine doses.

At the moment, influenza vaccines are strain-specific and manufacturers can only begin preparing a pandemic-specific vaccine after the outbreak of a deadly disease. But six months could pass between pandemic alert and pandemic vaccines reaching the market. If M-001 is used during this time period, BiondVax says it will enhance immunity and increase the number of people responding to the pandemic strain-specific vaccine.

“BiondVax has accomplished another milestone, pre-clinical proof-of-principle for M-001 serving as a pre-pandemic primer. This achievement, along with BiondVax’s success in passing a QP GMP audit, paves the way for multinational human clinical studies examining M-001 priming of bird flu vaccines,” said BiondVax’s CEO, Dr. Ron Babecoff.

BiondVax will present its data from these studies at the WHO conference in Hong Kong in January 2013.